28 entries from April 2009

The idea was to use sorrel. We had a few communication and logistical issues . We found beautiful watercress. The idea transformed, the sorrel was dropped like an idea which might not have even existed. We still want to come back to it. Today we are smitten with watercress and its delectable inspiration.

Cream of Watercress Ice Cream

235g whole milk110g liquid glucose70g egg yolk45g sugar3g salt

105g hydroponic watercress leaves and short stems

Puree the first five ingredients together in a blender. Pour the mixture into a vacuum bag and seal. Cook the mixture for thirty minutes at 82 degrees C in a water bath. Meanwhile place the raw watercress in a blender top. When the mixture is done cooking, remove it from the water bath, cut the bag open and pour the hot contents over the watercress. Puree the ingredients together for three minutes until the mixture turns green and the watercress is pulverized. Strain the ice cream base through a fine meshed sieve and cool in an ice bath. Reserve the mixture overnight and then freeze in an ice cream maker.

After a brief hiatus we're back in action over at Popular Science. Our most recent piece is an exploration of ramps, one of our favorite spring delicacies, with a recipe for cavatelli to get you going in the kitchen.

Occasionally an ingredient will come in that simply inspires. We taste it and must put it to use immediately. This recipe came about from one of those moments. It was our first shipment of butter from Diane St. Clair and I just knew that it would make shortbread that would amazing. We pulled it out again for Steve's maple syrup and the cookies were even better. Remember that because the ingredients involved are few, the quality of each one is extremely important. Every note counts.

Cream butter with maple syrup and sugar till light and fluffy. Blend Flour, cornmeal and salt. Add to butter and mix until the dough just comes together. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill dough 30 minutes in refrigeration.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/4-inch and cut out your desired shapes. Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until they are a pale golden color and just firm to the touch.

I am not sure if the history of this tradition dates back to the origins of beer, donuts or the NFL draft. What I do know for sure is the NFL season starts fresh today and there is nothing better than chasing toothpaste mouth with a fresh donut and a cold beer. It has been many years since I have partaken in this ritualistic past time and more importantly longer since I have shared the secrets of draft day. As the baseball season seems to drone on and on, yes I know it just started, draft day is the glimmer of light in the otherwise painful professional sports spring season. The one recent caveat with draft day donuts is that now the draft does not start until four in the afternoon. Somehow the NFL did not check with those that wish to consume vast quantities of beer and donuts earlier in the day using tradition as a loose excuse for sugar and hops gluttony. If you get a moment, grab a donut and a beer and celebrate, the draft is only 72 hours of televised nothingness where we can begin to get our hopes up for the upcoming season with dreams of undefeated teams, 2000 yard running backs and touchdowns galore.

The way to learn is to do. That is one of the reasons why chefs are drawn to farms and farmers. We have an innate curiosity and a desire to learn and find out where food comes from. Today I had the opportunity to dig for ramps. Today I played in the soil. Today I learned that more than just ramps grow in the moist soil near riverbeds.

When you spend the morning digging through dirt you begin to wonder why pickling ramps is the go to for such a humble and seasonal ingredient. There is more to be done, more to see and more to try. An ingredient dependent on the season deserves an attentiveness to its detail rather than a perfunctory response. Today's jaunt in the woods has fine tuned our focus and sparked new paths to travel. What have we not thought of and how may we execute these ideas in order to share the inspiration?

I have always enjoyed the idea of ingredients served in several services from the traditional Peking duck in two courses to the inspiring lobster in three, which we witnessed by Laurent Tourondel. Small and complimentary dishes are not a new concept, Rocco Dispirito, in his heyday, had a menu of 21 bites, seven rounds of smaller composed dishes which, when brought together, became a meal. Thomas Keller paved the way for American chefs who want to create only tasting menus, capturing the essence of an ingredient and an idea with each plate. Pierre Gagnaire has created another pathway serving small and large dishes in harmony, while Paul Liebrandt, at Corton, has turned it into an edible art form.

Small dishes are accents, sparks, thoughts in a longer chain of a meal. These micro creations can play a formative role in the shaping of a meal. Bigger dishes add substance and structure, while their smaller counterparts are often the polish and detailing. A larger plate can be balanced and nuanced, and a little something on the side or as a preview or complement raises the bar. The delicate touch needed to understand the synergy of juxtaposing large and small dishes is more difficult to execute than it is to write about. My imagination sometimes leaves me trying to put too many small dishes on one plate in order to add substance and to demonstrate culinary prowess. However there are times when the multiple preparations and micro presentations detract from the whole. Editing is key. Small and large plates are not interchangeable formats and have different parameters for success. If a pig and its parts were served in three small dishes, the parade of tastes, one following the next so that each element shines could not be combined as one because it would muddle the individual effects, much like the Monty Python line of putting it all in a bucket.

It is not easy to design and present dishes in complementary forms. It is even more difficult to orchestrate this sort of service out of a professional kitchen, never mind in a home environment. The complexity of ideas, timing, and execution is not well suited to a residential kitchen, though the approach should make you think. Very often in our homes what we eat and how we consume it is overshadowed by convenience and the mess factor. In composing ideas and refining thoughts and tastes we could benefit by looking at the smaller picture.

We have been chasing the idea of aerated for a long time. My first hopes were for aero foie, which we worked on for the dinner with Sean, and just could not get it right. Our caramelized white chocolate and foie was initially planned as an aerated preparation. Once again, failure. In that time we saw aero foie executed brilliantly at wd-50. We let the idea rest and percolate and finally it dawned on me. We needed a means to capture the aerated foie or chocolate or lemon curd in full aeration and keep the vacuum drawn so that we could cool the product and preserve the bubbles. This was not an easy task. Actually, it is much easier than we imagined. What we needed was a micro vacuum chamber. Something which would hold a vacuum even after the vacuum in our chamber machine was filled with air. Whatever could we use? Duh, mason jars. They are designed for preservation and holding a vacuum. They have been around for years and successfully done their job, just not in the actual capacity we were planning.

Today I had the opportunity to run our ideas through to execution. I spent the day doing a workshop with Shola and guess what, he had a full pantry of mason jars. With them in hand, we ran two full tests one using grapefruit juice, versa whip and xanthan gum, the other, chocolate set with agar and gelatin, (our LBG is still in storage). Both preparations were frozen and then plated and they not only showed promise, they proved absolutely serviceable, delicious, and spot on. The grapefruit aero-snow is to be paired with mozzarella soup and pistachio smoked shrimp. The chocolate, well I'm not quite sure what to pair it with, though the formulation will work quite well when we revisit foie gras and chicken liver preparations. The texture of the aerated chocolate is light and delicate with the first texture of mousse melting into the mouth-feel of pudding.

A beautiful soft boiled egg is not that easy to come by. A soft boiled egg served out of the shell, an even rarer experience. A soft boiled egg, out of the shell, served warm with crisp fingers of buttered toast, ahhhh the heavens sing. I have been lucky enough to experience versions of this egg respectively at: per se, elements, and momofuku ko. Each preparation and presentation inspired me and raised the question of how to consistently serve this elusive culinary delight. We have worked with eggs cooked without their shells in our twice cooked eggs, though there is something mysteriously exciting about cooking an ingredient precisely in its natural form. Nothing beats a Sunday morning to work on egg cookery, even mistakes will find an open and a receptive mouth. Something we should have done since the begining is to weigh our eggs in the shell. Why? In order to get consistent results we need to start with a constant. If eggs are of different sizes they will cook at different rates. It's a pretty simple idea that we have not utilized to our advantage. After my first round of cooking eggs this morning and the subsequent failure of inconsistent results, Aki asked if I realized that all my eggs were different sizes. How different? It turns out I grabbed and cooked a combination of large and extra large eggs. Two different sizes with two different results. For the next set of eggs Aki drove the bus. She picked only large eggs and started the cooking process. Unfortunately, Amaya was not that into egg cookery and the soft boiled eggs turned into perfect hard boiled snacks.

Back to me. This time I weighed the eggs, really just to see if all large eggs were the same size. They were close, about a two gram differential in our sample. I put the pot of water on to boil and added the eggs. We cooked the eggs for five minutes and fifteen seconds in getnly boiling water and then placed them into an ice bath. The eggs were cooked the way we wanted them and were relatively easy to peel. Paying attention to the details in cooking is easy to talk about and much more difficult to consistently execute. Deciding which details are important and paying attention to them is essential to consistent cookery.

I scoffed at Aki's commitment to saving the ham bone. "Who saves ham bones anymore, and what are you going to do with it anyway?"

"I'm going to make split pea and ham soup" she replied, as if I should have known.

I countered by stating that "No one likes split pea and ham soup anymore, it is old. Fresh pea soup is the way to go."

She quickly pointed out that I like to use frozen peas in my pea soup, so who was I to stick my nose up at dried peas...whoops!

Aki set about carving the last of the meat off the ham bone, attempting to leave generous scraps to flavor the soup. Meanwhile I stood by her side, encouraging her to get as much of the meat off the bone as possible because I had big plans for some grilled cheese and ham sandwiches. Her response is better left unwritten, with a young daughter who may go back and read this.

When Aki had sliced up the majority of the ham and clearly had enjoyed enough of my banter, she started the soup process, which involved the archaic method of simmering the overly meaty ham bone in water with bay leaves and parsley for three hours. I pointed out that a pressure cooker would get the job done in a third of the time. I tried to convince her of the flaws in her cooking process and her stare was sharper than the Japanese knife she used to cut her vegetables. I wisely moved on to other occupations and Aki continued to ignore my huffing and jaded looks, skimming the pot as fat and foam rose to the surface.

When the broth was fragrant and the meat was falling off the bone, she turned off the flame and let the bone rest. A bone has to rest, as though it was doing all sort of strenuous stuff in the pot. Yes, of course I was compelled to share that thought as well. When the bone was done resting, Aki removed it from the broth and placed it on a plate. Once again I questioned her actions. She responded as calmly as though I had not harassed her through the entire process, "I am going to shred it and fold it back into the finished soup." I thought she must be nuts because we all know, the meat left on the bone after making a stock or broth is absolutely useless.

This theory did not stop me from oh so casually walking by the plate and nicking a piece of meat. It was good, the salinity of the ham had mellowed and the meat was meltingly tender. I casually feigned interest in doing the dishes, since the sink is close to where the tired bone was resting, and I nicked another piece and then another and then I was caught. Aki innocently asked what I was doing. Well of course I was just testing the meat. She quizzically asked.."And?" I was forced to admit that it was some of the tastiest meat I had eaten in a long time. Tender, well balanced, rich, and mellow. If Aki had not intervened we might be writing about the cleanest ham bone I have ever seen. Thankfully she was able to rescue the rest of the meat for her split pea and ham soup. I am now extremely interested in what we can do with the meat left on the bones, particularly from cured meats. Sure we can make great broths, though I do believe the best meat is on the bone and it should definitely be utilized.

I've been reading Best Food Writing 2008 on my Kindle, don't get me started on how much I love it--especially the iphone application, it saves my sanity on a daily basis. Anyway back to the book, the 2008 version has a fair amount of politics and strong minded ideals between it's pages, the essay that really struck me today was one by Sarah DiGregorio, The Salami Maker Who Fought the Law, for Gastronomica, about Salumeria Biellese. Longtime readers know that we're fans of their work, they make some of the best salumi we've ever tasted. The article discusses the lengths they were forced to go to to get approved by the USDA. It's a thought provoking essay that shows that old school methods really do work, although most of the artisan producers will have a tough time coming up with the funds to prove their methods are safe for human consumption according to government standards. We're glad that they were able to push their approval through and we only wish it did more to help pave the way for other quality producers.

I read an interesting piece on burgers today. In the creation and development of a burger or even simply a dish, sometimes delivering the expected and preconditioned idea of what is supposed to be there is not necessarily the right answer for the individual chef. We expect burgers to be served with pickles. More often than not we also expect burgers to have sliced tomatoes. As our friend Tony Maws, the creator of the inspired burger in the article, did not have any fresh pickles on hand, he left them off the plate. They may make an appearance once fresh cucumbers come to market and he can make his own. Tomatoes will not be added until August when they actually grow in the Northeast. These two seasonal limitaions sent my mind racing off in a number of directions. Sure, fresh cucumbers might not be available, why not substitute thin slices of pickled celery root, spicy rutabaga, or even sweet and sour turnips to add a surprisingly unexpected tang; the unexpected pickle to accompany the artisan burger? Why do tomatoes need to be on a burger? Could we rehydrate and roast sun dried tomatoes to make a delcious winter/spring accompaniment? What else is possible? A deeper look into an ingredient book and a few conversations with some smarter people will hopefully help me open up a few new directions for our search for the perfect burger.

Our Easter traditions are pretty fluid. The strawberry pie is as close to a staple as we have and even that doesn't make the table every year. It definitely appears around Easter-time every year but not necessarily on Saturday night (for the Talbot dinner) or Sunday afternoon with my family. It all depends on what's happening. This year on Sunday we're at the Goodwin table and among the many offerings are ham, spinach, "better than sex" cake, and eggplants.

Eggplants are always referred to in the plural even though you may never see them as such in common usage. When referred to this way, they are always cut thin, breaded, fried, and served plain either as a side dish or eaten out of hand, really just out of pan. My Aunt Lucy made them when I was a child, nowadays I can either buy them in a good Italian deli or wait for Peg to make them. They fall into the category of food that tastes best when someone else cooks. As she fried them this afternoon people hovered around the pan or wandered in and out of the kitchen to nibble on crisp slices and offer opinions on the seasoning. Usually about half the supply is gone well before dinner is on the table. If there are any left over, they don't last longer than lunchtime the next day. People love them, even people who think they don't like eggplant.

So this Easter Sunday we wish you happiness and eggplants, meaning a day full of things that just make you feel good that you don't necessarily have to make for yourself.

As we get ready for warmer weather talk of BBQ keeps popping up. These conversations were the perfect spark to get us into action. We have discussed a desire to make BBQ noodles for some time, though we continued to procrastinate. The dinner at Elements with the buckwheat pasta further pushed us forward. It took a bit of time to fine tune the dough and the end result produced powerfully aromatic noodles with a sweet and intense BBQ flavor. Tonight the noodle is still in the raw, resting quietly in the background as its place in our repertoire is still to be decided.

Alex has waited for over four months to feed Amaya. That's a mighty long time. Lately she's been eating more and more often, and in spite of the books that tell me to wait for six months, we listened to the experienced mothers and fathers that eyeballed her avid gaze while she sat through meals at the table and said she's ready to try something more. Having had the pleasure of taking care of all of her nourishment thus far I understood Alex's need to prepare this first meal for his daughter. We chose to forgo rice or barley cereal and begin with a sweet potato. We reasoned that food should be a pleasure for her and we wanted to start with something delicious. He roasted a tray of sweet potatoes for dinner last night and when they came out of the oven he scooped out the tender flesh of one and pureed it in the blender with a bit water. It cooled as we ate dinner and then I started her off with some mother's milk. She's been teething this last month although there is nary a tooth in sight. One of her favorite gum soothers has been an infant's spoon chilled in the fridge. So when Alex set up beside us with a bowl and spoon Amaya smiled with anticipation. I held her on my lap as he brought the spoon to her lips. She opened her mouth obligingly and her eyes widened as the tiny smear of sweet potato crossed her lips. There was an instant where she considered it, unsure exactly what was happening or if she was enjoying it. Then she swallowed and smiled, her fingers tracing her lips, smearing purée everywhere, and opened her mouth for more. It was a magic moment for everyone watching and most of all for Daddy as he and Amaya finally shared their first meal.

Today for lunch I ate cold pepperoni pizza and a chocolate dipped cupcake while I held the baby. As I savored the crumbs of moist cake that stuck to my fingers I remarked to Alex that it felt like a party. Years of birthday parties with pizza and cake were ingrained into my psyche so that even this unorthodox version still made me feel vaguely celebratory as I enjoyed it. My lunch had the upside of not being accompanied by the inevitable small dramas and upsets that occur at any children's party. On the other hand there were no presents or goody bags at the end of my meal. It was a fleeting pleasure that made me think of parties to come as Amaya slowly comes of age.

We've been working on a couple of projects, one about vegetarian cooking. The idea is to create luxurious vegetarian food. My own caveat to this goal is the need to use everyday ingredients so that the dishes are easily accessible and enjoyed. To this end we were talking about texture. Smooth, creamy textures, whether hot or cold, tend to feel luxurious. Much in the same way that silks and satins against the skin feel indulgent, rich textures on the palate make the dinner feel coddled and cosseted. There needs to be contrast and texture certainly, to awaken the senses and allow the brain and the tongue to participate in the experience, it was just the realization that luxury can be about more than simply ingredients, it can be the way a chef uses the ingredients to evoke emotion.

Both memory and texture came into play in my thought processes. Actual dishes or combinations can create an experience, like cupcakes and pizza. It makes me wonder, what food combinations resonate for you? What textures make you feel luxurious?

Buckwheat from groats to flour is an interesting grain. It has a nutty sweetness with a touch of bitterness which helps keep flavors in check. We fine tuned this pasta dough for the dinner at elements and are really excited about its new-found role in our kitchen.

Mix dry ingredients together and wet ingredients together separately. Mix the wet into the dry until fully incorporated and then knead the mass until a smooth elastic dough is formed. Wrap tightly and vacuum seal on high for best results and ideal hydration. After thirty minutes the dough is usable and ready to roll.

Using and understanding relationships to inspire innovation. It's a relatively simple concept. In relation to cooking it involves building a body of knowledge. In order to innovate efficiently and well, one must understand the basic relationships in the kitchen. Not the relationship between chefs and cooks, the relationships between ingredients and their environment. Cooking is about what happens when you apply heat or cold to an edible object. It's about how different proportions affect you final outcome. It's about how structures are affected by being altered, whether it's the way that you butcher an animal or whether you peel celery or whether you apply liquid nitrogen or moist heat to a raspberry. What happens next is the question that drives chefs and scientists alike. If you can understand the basic relationships then you can make an educated guess about what happens next. This knowledge is what leads to innovation because if you understand why something happens then you can puzzle out a better way to do it. Life is not just about getting from Point A to Point B, it's about doing it well and enjoying the journey.

Sunday is really a good day to go through notebooks and post it notes. While in the past we have uploaded full notebooks and they are download-able on the side bar, we feel that sharing a page now and again might spark a few more ideas. I spent a few hours writing today and this is the top page of notes.

In looking to accent and boost the flavor of our potato chip ice cream while adding some texture to the dish we opted to make potato chip praline. The inspiration for the praline came directly from our pretzel praline. The process for making the praline is also the same. The flavor of the caramelized sugar in conjunction with the toasty potatoes, salt and pepper makes a snack which is hard to put down with a texture that makes crispy potato chips seem limp. In all honesty we were quite embarrassed with how long it took us to get to potato chip praline from the initial pretzel praline. Thankfully we got here and the time between then and now has made the discovery all the sweeter and delicious in the execution and eating.

I was fortunate enough to attend and to speak at the recent IACP conference in Denver. I worked with two stellar photographers on a presentation on photography for food blogs. I am still digesting the amount of knowledge I learned in the process. What I am excited about is the evolution in our photography and the potential now exposed. The picture above is an arrangement of fruits, nuts and vegetables which I cobbled together from the walk-in on site. I am quite pleased with the resulting salad both in taste and aesthetic. As for the lighting, it was a simple attached light in a dark room. Not bad results for some improvisation guided by a bit of know how.

The Kindai dinner at Elements was incredibly inspirational, from the design of restaurant itself, to the collaboration with Scott & Joe, to the team we got to know intimately, to the incredible fish we got to work with and learn more about, to the creative juices we all drank like kool aid. With all of the fresh and fond memories of the event it would be nice to relive things, to be able to look back and have a reference for the stories and the dishes. Photography is growing ever more important in the kitchen, both as a recording device and as a tool for improvement in cooking, working, and creativity. Thankfully, Shola was able to attend the dinner and capture the behind the scenes photographs of the event. He has posted a few shots from the evening and we look forward to his commentary on the evening as a whole.

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